“When I caught sight of the light, about an hour later, and reported it, it wasn’t any brighter than it looked when you came on deck, a while ago, Mark, and we were heading directly for it.  When the skipper came up and looked at it he told me to ’keep her so’ while he took a squint at the chart.

“He hadn’t more than gone below again when there came such a gust of wind and rain, with thunder and lightning close after, as to hide the light and keep me busy for a few minutes holding the schooner up to it.

“The squall passed as suddenly as it came, and there was the light, right over the end of the flying-jib-boom, burning as steady as ever, but looking mighty blue, somehow.  I thought it was the effect of the mist, and tried to keep her headed for it.  As I was getting terribly puzzled and fussed up by what I thought was the strange action of the compass, and by the way the little spiteful gusts of wind seemed to come from every quarter at once, the skipper came on deck.  Before he had cleared the companion-way he asked,

“‘How does Hatteras Light bear?’

“‘Dead ahead, sir,’ said I.

“As he stepped on deck he turned to look at it, and I saw him start as though he saw something awful.  He looked for half a minute, and then in a half-choked sort of voice he gasped out, ‘The Death-Light!’

“At the same moment the light, that I had took to be Hatteras, rolled slowly, like a ball of fire, along the jib-top-sail stay to the top-mast head, and then I knew it was a St. Elmo’s fire, a thing I’d heard of but never seen before.

“As we all looked at it, afraid almost to say a word, there came a sound like a moan over the sea, and in another minute a cyclone, such as I hope never to see again, laid us, first on our beam ends, and then drove us at a fearful rate directly towards the coast.

“We drove this way for an hour or more, unable to do a thing to help ourselves, and then she struck on Hatteras sands.  Her masts went as she struck, and as they fell a huge sea, rushing over the poor craft, swept overboard the captain and two men.  It was some time before we knew they were gone, for we could see nothing nor hear anything but the howl of the tempest.

“At last we got rid of the floating wreck of spars by clearing the tangled rigging with our knives, and, thus relieved, the schooner was driven a good bit farther over the sands.  Finally she struck solid, and began to break up.  One of her boats was stove and worthless, and in trying to clear away the other, a metallic life-boat, another man was swept overboard and lost.

“The mate and two of the crew besides myself finally got away from the wreck in this boat, and were driven in to the beach, on which we were at last flung more dead than alive.

“The next morning we made our way to the light-house, where we were kindly cared for, but where our Christmas dinner was a pretty sad affair.